The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1898. CONSCRIPTION IN GREAT BRITAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 21, 26 January 1898, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1898.

CONSCRIPTION IN GREAT BRITAIN.

' For tho cause that lacks assistance, For tho wrong that noedo resistance, For the futuro in tho distance, And tho pood that v/o can do.

The idea of military conscription has always been supremely distasteful to the British mind, but of late years 'the nation of shopkeepers,' as Napoleon contemptuously styled us, has come to regard the possibility of our having to adopt some modification of the Continental system of universal service with scarcely the old scepticism. High military authorities have openly advocated the thing, while very many have shown by their words that, averse as they might be to conscription in Britain, yet they foresaw that the necessity for it might easily arise at no distant date. The very fact that in so many speeches of late the speakers have reassured their audiences that compulsory srvice is not yet required in England is ominous in itself, for it shows that Ihe authorities have already had the matter forced upon their attention by th<* unsatisfactory results obtained by the present system .of voluntary enlistment. And if ' fnis system is not found to easily provide' the necessary number of fighting1 men in tlies'e days when Great Britain's wars, though numerous enough, have been fought against an enemy numerically limited or inadequately trained and equipped, what will be the case when the great war breaks out and she has lo reckon with the perfectly drilled battalions of Europe. The presumption in most minds is that tha naval strength of the Empire will always be enough to protect it without the aid of the army, or at any rate with comparatively small help from that direction, but in the unexpected changes which may arise in the event of a war involving the greater part of Europe, the call for fighting men will to a certainty be as loud as the cry for ships, fu view of the enormous territory thai Great Britain must protect, it is not possible that she can do it without a very large lighting force in addition 1o her navy. The Marquis of Lansdowne, the Secre tirry* for Wiii\ in a recent optimistic speech'on the state of the army, referred to tit's matter. He admitted that the time might come when conscript ion would be necessary in England,and added that though the people would never tolerate it for foreign service they might get accustomed to it for purposes of Home defence merely. And this is certainly how conscription will have its beginning in the Old Country. Nor do we believe that there would be much difficulty in initiating the system in the heat of a great national crisis. Let but the safety of the little island —'Freedom's Redoubt,' as Wordsworth calls it—be for a moment threatened by invasion by a foreign foe, and any feeling against, military service that may now exist would vanish in an instant. The fire of patriotism would burn \ip all these selfish scruples, and every eounterjumper in the land "would leap from his counter and till, and strike with his yard wand home.' The system thus introduced might, continue to exist when the danger was past, and thus England would iind herself committed to conscription in one form or another.

So much has this subject been forced upon the. attention of people at Home of late that more than one article has been written on the changed conditions of life in England which the adoption of conscription would bring about. The London 'Daily Mail' has: an interesting' article in which it speculates on the fate of the average' Englishman should political developments bring about' the exchange oi ■;a standing army for a national and :compulsory ones. On completing his i seventeenth year, says the writer, ■e-very Briton would become a defensive soldier, and thence, until-he reaches' forty-six years, lie might be callet upon1 to repel an invasion. That v. to say, he would, for these twenty nine yeai'S of his life, be, at the ver\ least a member of the Landsturm which, is a-species of militia.- At tin age of twenty, however, he would bt called'upon to enter the Active Army Perhaps he would be rejected beeaus, of some bodily defect, in which cashe would fall • back into the Lam 1 sturm; or,-perhaps, he. would be e> eiised from service, although phys cally fit, for several reasons that wi; be presently referred to. In that cas-. also, he would return to the Lam sturm. Supposing,' however, th; when twenty years old there were i. physical defects and no extenuatir. circumstances, he would be enrolls.' in the Active Army, which would coi sist of two divisions—the Field Arm and the Reserve. In the Field Am. the recruit would remain constant for three years. Then lie might,

he chose, go Home on furlough m belong to the Reserve for four yea more. At the erid of that time i would enter the Landwehr, and whe he was thirty-two years of ng-e 1

would pass into the Landsturm or. more. But, oi course, this would nfall to the. lot of every man. Hu, dreds of thousands would <be rejecte

because" they had lost a hand; or a trigger finger, or a thumb, or an eye, or a qpuple of toes; because they had consumption or heart disease: because, of low morals and small stature of girth. Then young 'men ' otherwise acceptable would escape service if they happened to be theolog-ical students; if they were the only sons of widows or'the sole support of a family; if they owned a factory which would go to the dogs in their absence, or if they were property holders whose property would suffer without their superintendence. The same article, after thus showing what conscription means, proceeds to count the cost, and comes to the conclusion that while, there is little question regarding the Continental system as an army maker it is fraught with the greatest disadvantages to industry find trade. So much is this the case that it is considered almost impossible in Germany, where it has its home, it can be'maintained without disastrously hindering that country in the path of industrial progress on which it has recently entered "with ttuch signal success. But conscription to the extent it obtains on the Continent was certainly never contemplated in Great Britain. If 1 per cent, of the population of the British fsles was enrolled it would give an army of 400,000, or if, as in France, l;f per cent, were enrolled, there would be 700,000 men under arms all the time, while the war footing- of Great Britain, under a similar system to that existing' in France, would be 2,500,000 and the total defence force 4,500,000. Certainly, with such a navy as ours, we do not require such a huge body of men, but, as we said, before, a certain modified system of conscription may yet be found advantageously necessary.